The Mount Holmes Fire Lookout, seen here in 2012, burned down Tuesday after being struck by lightning/NPS
Editor’s note: This corrects that the fire was spotted by the Mount Washburn Lookout.
In a bit of backcountry irony, a lightning strike led to a fire that burned down the historic Mount Holmes Fire Lookout in Yellowstone National Park.
The Mount Washburn Lookout spotter noticed the fire atop Mount Holmes, which stands at 10,000 feet, and reported it Tuesday afternoon. The structure fire also damaged a park radio repeater, according to park staff.
The fire lookout is located southwest of Mammoth Hot Springs and north of Madison Junction. On Wednesday morning three employees, including the park fire chief, tried to fly to the lookout via helicopter to assess the damage. However, the flight was postponed when the whirlybird was diverted to a higher priority incident outside the park. While en route, the helicopter manager snapped a photo of the burned lookout.
In the coming days additional attempts will be made to land a team at the lookout.
Little was left of the Mt. Holmes Fire Lookout after it burned to the ground after a lightning strike/NPS
As of Wednesday, the Mount Holmes Trail west of the junction with the Trilobite Lake Trail and the summit of Mount Holmes were closed to the public. The closure will remain in effect until the unsafe conditions are assessed, mitigated, and no longer pose a threat to public safety.
“Built in 1931, and renovated in 1998, the Mount Holmes Fire Lookout maintained its historic-era role as one of Yellowstone National Park’s staffed lookout stations until 2007. The building was eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, both for its significance in early park resource protection efforts, and as an outstanding example of the rustic architectural style that typified early park architecture. We are disappointed that this historic structure, as a window into the past, is gone,” said Yellowstone Deputy Superintendent Pat Kenney.
The Mount Washburn Fire Lookout is currently staffed seven days a week, mid-June through mid-September. If warranted, three additional lookouts can be staffed.
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Comments
The lookout staff member who spotted the fire was at the Mt Washburn lookout, twenty-one miles away from Mt. Holmes. The Mt. Holmes lookout should have been locked, shuttered and winterized. The article above is confusing on this point.
The park has five (now four) lookout stations: Washburn, Sheridan, Pelican, Observation, and Holmes. Only Washburn is staffed with any regularity anymore. With modern lightening detection and mapping technology, and aerial fire patrols during fire season, along with encroaching civilization where lands used to be more sparsely populated and visited, manned lookouts throughout North America are largely a thing of the past.
Many thanks for catching that error, anonymous. We’ve fixed it.